Curwin,
They do not need to build the President’s car out of the same material because he has all those secret service agents. It would be a huge waste of tax-payers’ money to do that. If a toilet seat costs 500 bucks, a KITT limo would be a million-billion dollars.
And I am sorry for your disappointment at Universal Studios, but that was not KITT. That was one of KITT’s helpers. Kinda like the mall-Santa deal. Trust me, KITT is real!!
I saw KITT in “the flesh” when they were filming one day near my house. The steering wheel was one of those airplane-yoke deals. That is it looked like this:
(-) – kind of like a circle with the top and bottom crescents cut out.
Given that this was a real car–I mean I saw it sitting there and all–how the hell does one steer with a wheel like that?–especially given the high speeds that KITT was capable of and all.
Seeing as KITT was this ultra-high-tech vehicle, this seems to be quite un-ergonomic.
Well, it is possible that KITT had a very responsive steering system. Imagine a Formula 1 car: the drivers don’t have to turn the wheel three times to make it corner really sharp. So you could configure a normal car like that: a 90 degree turn of the steering wheel would mean a full-lock right or left. It would make the car terribly nervous to drive though. But hey: KITT can handle that much. Plus, American sportscars are mostly guided through corners by means of the accelerator anyway 